"You want to go to dinner?" she mumbled. "I mean… it's barely just past noon."
"I can return this evening if you would prefer," he replied.
"Um, would you like to maybe go to lunch instead?" she asked.
"That will be acceptable," he agreed. "I apologize for arriving unexpectedly."
"No, I'm really glad you came back," she muttered. "I wish I had been wearing more clothes, but… anyway."
"I sent you a message, and you did not respond," he explained.
"I only turned my PADD off a few hours ago," she explained. "Is there something important you wanted to talk about?"
"I do need to speak with you as a matter of professional urgency," he admitted, pausing. "And I would like to speak with you informally, as your friend."
Professional urgency? Friends? Amanda nodded carefully before looking down at herself and asking, "Well, can you give me a few minutes to finish properly dressing?"
"Of course."
"Um, make yourself comfortable," she said, motioning to her couch and wondering what he considered comfortable.
Amanda trod back to her bedroom and he took a seat on her small sofa. When she arrived in her bathroom, she set to work combing and drying her hair in record time, all the while feeling anxiety rise within her.
She had made a weak joke about embarrassing herself and now found herself running through increasingly ridiculous scenarios in which she probably could embarrass herself worse: she could vomit on him, or accidentally stab him. A few minutes ago she hadn't dared hope she'd ever see him on such a personal level again, but now that he was here she didn't know what to say. Adding to her worry was what he was here to say. As she rushed through brushing her teeth and spit into the sink, she looked back at herself in the mirror and considered her appearance.
She looked somehow older than she had just a few days earlier. And sadder. She sighed, hung her toothbrush in the holder, and put on a pair of gray flat shoes.
She came out of her bedroom awkwardly, balling her hands into nervous fists and turned the corner into her common room. He had turned off the holo projector and stood near her pub table. Euclid was settled at the corner and rubbing his face on Sarek's hand.
"Try though I tried dissuade him, your pet is quite insistent on perching himself upon your furniture," he noted.
"Well, he's a cat: they're not famous for obedience," she replied with a pursed smile.
As she walked toward him, Euclid sprang from the table and she realized her work from the previous night was still laid out in the open. She slid her hands over the back of her pub stool and started collecting her materials.
"I didn't get the chance to thank you for lending me the book," she said.
"It was not intended as a loan. It was intended as a gift."
"Oh… thank you," she stammered. "I'm only about a third of the way through it, but it's been… a journey."
His eyebrows raised a fraction and he insisted she explain.
"Well, Vulcan isn't my native language, and I'm also not well-versed in Surak's teachings, so there were a few passages in particular that I struggled with, just because Vulcan has the frustrating habit of being so ambiguous," she admitted.
"The Teachings of Surak have confounded many scholars and prompted a number of interpretations since they were first recorded."
"That doesn't seem very logical," she said, stopping before she went too far down the rabbit hole of criticism for fear of offending his beliefs.
"It was not designed to be," he said.
She arched an eyebrow at him and continued to collect her books and charts into a pile.
"Speak your mind," he urged.
"I don't want to offend you or say anything wrong."
"It is your opinion of a philosophy that I did not compose. It is illogical to assume anything you say could cause me personal offense," he challenged.
"Well, I haven't even finished half of it, so it seems unfair to render a judgment without an understanding of the entire work."
"Wise," he nodded. "Though I am curious about your preliminary opinion."
She bit her lip and glanced down at the book in her hands.
"Well, ok. Each line taken separately seems like a really vague parable. Very obvious… Yet when they are taken together, it's easier to see a deeper meaning. The more broadly I consider the text, the more profound it becomes. But the one thing that confuses me most that I alluded to earlier is the idea that the foundational text of a culture so engrossed in logic and facts and reason would be so… unclear. But that's true of your language as well, so I'm not sure which to blame."
As she finished talking she straightened up a bit, feeling as if she'd said too much and should prepare to defend her point.
"Fascinating analysis," he mused.
Euclid jumped back on the table and sauntered over to Sarek and resumed bunting his hand with his face.
"Euclid seems to like you; he normally hates people he doesn't know," she said, petting her cat's back and watching it instinctively arch with the pressure of her hand.
"Was not 'Euclid' one of your early mathematicians?"
"Yeah," she replied. "That's where I got the name. The markings on his side are triangular."
"I see," he said.
"Ambassador Sarek…" she started, catching her words in her throat and fighting to compose them into a coherent sentence. "I know you didn't come here to talk about the Teachings of Surak, or my cat."
Maybe she had been too brisk. He was Vulcan though; she figured he could take it. Even so, the words felt strangely confrontational and she wished she had said them differently.
"That is true," he admitted. "I do-"
"Do you want to go for a walk?" she interrupted, blushing.
"Do you have a destination in mind?"
"No," she confessed. "But the weather is nice and I thought we were going to lunch. Though to tell you the truth, I'm not really very hungry. Still, I'd just rather be… somewhere else."
"Very well," he answered, though she sensed mild confusion about her request.
"I just haven't left my house in two days and I'm not as capable of controlling my emotions as you. Being here, it just… makes me… well, never mind."
He agreed to request. She grabbed her shoulder bag from the chair and escorted him out of her apartment. She swiped her card through the access port to lock it and met him on the sidewalk.
"Are you certain you wish to walk?" he asked. "I can have the car take you wherever you wish to go."
"You're making me second guess myself, considering the last time you suggested we take a car and I was too stubborn to listen, we ended up in the middle of a riot," she smiled.
"It is illogical to assume there is a connection between your refusal to ride in a vehicle and the emergence of misfortune," he argued.
"Yes, it is," she stated matter-of-factly. "But I'm not really sure where I want to go, so is it ok if we just walk?"
"If you prefer," he said with an air that suggested that it wasn't what he would prefer but he was willing to humor her.
They walked north down the street along the wide sidewalk for nearly a block before he spoke. "When I initially arrived at your home this morning, my intent was to express my condolences for your father and his crew," he explained.
"Yeah," she said, biting her lip. "Thank you. That actually means a lot."
She wasn't eager to talk about her father for fear that she would cry. Being with him had been helping her to forget the whole thing, even if just for a little while. He formed his hands into a steeple before him, giving him the appearance of contemplating his next words. They walked for nearly another block that way when Amanda asked, "So what is this matter of 'professional urgency' you need to speak to me about? I'm curious to know what the Vulcan ambassador to Earth needs to professionally discuss with me."
"It regards your father," he said, letting his hands fall back to his sides. "I understand speaking on that subject is probably distressing to you."
"It is," she confessed, surprised he would have that kind of consideration. "But if there's anything you need to know, I'll do my best to tell you. Without crying."
"Are you certain you would not prefer to have this conversation in private?"
"I don't think it matters, though I guess it depends on the questions you have," she shrugged. "Can I ask why you want to know about my father?"
"The Vulcan High Council, as well as Starfleet and the Andorian authorities, are investigating unusual circumstances surrounding the Comstock incident."
"I knew there was an investigation, but you're actually the first person to talk to me about it. To be honest, I haven't been watching the news. After everything that happened after the conference I can't say I have much faith in the media, not that I even did before," she said, trying to keep the bitterness from her tone.
"Are you not aware that the Terran government is holding an emergency congressional session tomorrow to discuss secession from the Federation?"
"What?" she gasped in surprise. "Why?"
"The Terran government claims it is in response to the loss of the Comstock."
"That doesn't make any sense," she gasped. "I mean, things like this happen, don't they? They don't even know if it was an accident or not."
He didn't respond.
"Don't they?" she repeated. She glared at him but still he had no words to offer.
"You know, don't you? You know, but you either won't or can't tell me," she finally said. "If you didn't know you would tell me so. If you won't tell me because you think it will hurt me, I don't care. I want to know. But if you can't tell me for important reasons, I'll try to understand. Which is it?"
"The latter, Miss Grayson," he said. "I do not wish to conceal anything from you unnecessarily, but as you're coming to understand the full scope of the matter, surely you can see how there likely exists a certain amount of protected information."
"Sure, I guess," she murmured, noting a sudden ringing in her ears.
They walked several more blocks without speaking. She appreciated that Sarek seemed to be giving her space to think without badgering her, but she wasn't sure where her train of thought was on schedule to go.
"I understand that you can't tell me much of what you know about the Comstock," she said, biting her lip and refusing to look in his direction. "But can you give me your opinion on a few things?"
"I shall try," he agreed.
"Do you think my father is dead?"
It was a frank question and she imagined it was one he hadn't been expecting, because he took his time before saying, "You told me once that you would prefer to hear a hard truth to a reassuring lie."
She gave him a pained smile but felt her heart beginning to pound harder, as though his answer somehow had a legitimate role in deciding her father's fate.
"I cannot be certain, but given the evidence as I know it to be, no, I do not believe your father survived whatever befell the Comstock." He looked at her as he finished his sentence and she felt her heart sinking.
She'd promised to try not to cry. She breathed deeply and bit her cheek hard enough to taste blood. Through her fresh wave of grief she felt a bizarre gratitude for his honesty. He had been the only person who hadn't tried to give her false hope or tell her that things would be ok.
Well, actually that wasn't true. John hadn't either. They walked along for another few minutes and Amanda could hear sounds of the ocean. Her mind felt tangled and raced through a perplexing web, but she still felt a pride in herself that she'd thus far managed to avoid breaking down into tears again.
At long last she asked, "What will Earth do without the Federation?"
"I cannot tell you," he replied. "I can tell you that we should either alter our course or prepare to swim."
She took note of their surroundings in surprise. They had come through the tightly packed buildings and into a parking lot that overlooked the ocean. The sun glittered off the Golden Gate Bridge to their right and a cool breeze lapped at her face.
"Do you want to go for a swim?" she joked.
"Vulcans are not adept swimmers."
"I think I was teasing," she said, watching a pair of gulls fight over a food wrapper. "The water is probably freezing anyway. I've taken up a lot of your time. Do you want to go back? You can ask me whatever you want about my father: it's fine."
"I would be willing to remaining here for a while, if you choose. My presence is not required at the consulate until 1700 hours."
"Would you like to go down to the water?"
He motioned for her to lead the way, and they crossed the parking lot and descended a set of metal stairs to the sandy beach below. There were a handful of people milling around and a man playing fetch with a dog.
They walked about 50 meters away from the beachgoers to a secluded outcropping of rocks and Amanda looked over the bay. In all the months she'd lived in San Francisco she'd never visited any of its beaches. She now caught herself wondering why, then remembered she spent most of her time hiding away in the embassy basement tinkering away on language matrices. She climbed up onto a shorter boulder that had a smooth surface and tucked her legs under her skirt and kneeled into a sitting position.
Sarek approached her. She could feel him watching her watch the ocean, but they'd been quiet for so long she wasn't sure how to break the silence. Then he did.
"I don't believe I conveyed my sincerest apologies to you earlier for my actions this morning."
"Hmmm?" she wondered.
"I behaved indecently and I believe it caused your emotional distress."
"You told me that my apology was illogical," she said. "And now here you are doing the same thing."
"It is illogical to apologize for circumstances outside of your control," he began to explain. "But the circumstances were in my power to control."
"How so? What exactly are you apologizing for?" she asked, now completely confused. "I broke a tea cup, you came to help me, and then I-" she choked and blushed. "I kissed you. It was so presumptuous of me and I don't know what I was thinking. I'm surprised you came back at all."
Amanda finally looked at him and started to tear up from her confessions. She felt a familiar sense of dread. He said nothing but it instantly dawned on her what he was implying.
"Are you suggesting that you think you kissed me?"
He looked straight into her eyes and she resisted the urge to look away. Still he said nothing.
"Is that what you're saying?" she prodded. "Correction - not saying? Why would you think that? Did you kiss me? Why would you?"
As soon as the words escaped her mouth she wished she could draw them back in. His failure to say anything was getting her worked up and she knew she sounded hostile.
"My species engages in the practice for the same reason as yours," he said quietly, sitting next to her on the lower end of the rock and placing his hands on his knees.
"Oh," she said, her dumbstruck face burning scarlet as she looked away to the ocean horizon.
Another interlude of quiet passed between them and she absorbed the sounds of the falling tide, sea birds, and cool wind. Eventually she dared herself to glance at him from the corner of her eye and saw he was watching her intently.
"I did not intend to upset you," he eventually said.
"You haven't upset me."
"I was referring to this morning," he clarified.
"You didn't upset me then, either. In fact, you haven't ever upset me," Amanda explained. "Though you've often been guilty of confusing the hell out of me."
"Explain."
"Which part?"
"Both parts."
"Well, you didn't upset me this morning: I was already upset. My dad is probably dead and I've been coping with that for the last two days. Even though I'm going through a really hard time, I was happy when you came by this morning because I was afraid I'd offended you the last time I saw you, since you left in such a hurry. But then I broke a teacup that my father gave me as a gift and ended up falling and hurting myself and being that vulnerable in front of you was… awkward. You were so kind in trying to help me. So between being sad, hurt, embarrassed, and grateful, I just felt overwhelmed. It was nothing you did that made me cry, and I'm sorry if my emotional outburst bothered you."
She sighed and bit her lip and watched him for a reaction. After a few moments he answered, "I have grown accustomed to coping with the emotions of other species. As a diplomat I have certainly provoked emotional responses on numerous occasions. I am very familiar with things like anger, fear, frustration, impatience, and greed."
"But you don't have a lot of experience when it comes to dealing with crying human women?"
"None," he agreed.
Amanda slid her hands backward over the rock face and gazed up at the few clouds in the sky.
"I really hate that I have to rely on you to tell me what you're thinking," she suddenly admitted. "With humans it's so easy, because what they're thinking usually has much to do with that they're feeling, and what they're feeling is usually written in their body language. But you… you're this… perpetual enigma."
She gave him a pained smirk and squinted as the sun moved out from behind a cloud and caught her eye.
"At this moment I am thinking… that I care for you, Amanda Grayson."
His words were so simple and were stated so plainly, yet they still had the effect of almost knocking the wind out of her. His face wore its usual neutral expression, but she could see there was more to his eyes and the slight creases around them than she was accustomed to. She sat forward without taking her eyes off of him and realized she was holding her breath.
On a strange impulse she reached out her hand toward him, palm facing upward. He considered her gesture and removed his left hand from his knee and extended it to meet hers. She had been expecting him to take her hand but instead he gently brushed her index finger with his own and slowly brought his middle finger up beside it. As his fingers traced down the length of her forefinger and met her knuckle, she felt a subtle upsurge of… something.
The sensation was familiar but she had difficulty placing it. It was somehow simultaneously the feeling of delicate euphoria and overwhelming calmness. Her hand was shaking and she started to feel dizzy when finally realized she wasn't breathing and gasped for air. He retracted his hand and though his face remained unchanging, she could detect a nervous curiosity there.
"I ought to have asked for your consent," he said quietly.
"Consent for what?" she asked, folding her hands together in her lap.
"To touch you in such an intimate way."
"Did I do something wrong?" she asked in a panic, wondering what fresh mortification was in store.
"No," he stated. "Among my people, ozh'esta is normally practiced only between bondmates."
"Ozh'esta?" she asked, rolling the word over her tongue. "Finger...?"
"I do not believe there is an adequate translation. The closest approximation would be perhaps something like a finger embrace."
She cocked her head to the side. Surprised by her lack of shyness, she unfolded her hands and with a tiny gesture from her right hand asked, "May I?"
His eyebrows raised in surprise and he paused a moment before extending his right hand and taking hers in what initially seemed like would be a handshake but quickly devolved back into what he had referred to as ozh'esta. His touch was more certain this time, and with an uncharacteristic boldness she met the sureness of his fingers with her own.
She watched their fingers tenderly touch with rabid fascination and amid the wondrous contentment she perceived a growing urge to draw nearer to him and passionately kiss him. It was obvious to her that such a public display of affection would probably shock and embarrass him, or whatever passed for embarrassment among Vulcans. They slowly retracted their hands from each other and all the awkward bashfulness that had been oddly absent hit her like a shockwave.
She could feel a quiet apprehension to him, which was explained when he said, "Miss Grayson, I would be remiss if I did not tell you that should Earth decide to leave the Federation in the near future, I shall not be remaining on the planet."
She couldn't think of words capable of delivering a more figurative punch to her gut. He was going back to Vulcan? Her numbness must have been apparent in her expression. Why would he touch her in what he had referred to as an "intimate way" if he was leaving?
She wanted to yell at him for toying with her feelings. But then she realized feelings were a human domain, and maybe he didn't realize the effect he was creating. Then she felt the wild urge to tell him how she felt about him, especially seeing as how it seemed like she had little to lose if he was likely returning home. But what would that do? It wouldn't make him stay.
He took her hand again but held it contemplatively this time, causing her to feel almost angry.
"We should probably go back," she muttered, pulling her hand away and standing.
He stood also and she hopped from the rock and began walking briskly back to the stairs through the sand. He followed her, remaining a half pace behind. As they walked through the parking lot and back to the street he caught up with her and they walked abreast for a number of minutes. When she felt moderately confident that she could prevent herself from stuttering or crying, she said, "You said you had some questions about my father."
"Yes," he admitted.
"Well, what do you want to know?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
"I recall you told me that your father believed he had found helium-3 deposits. Do you know of anything else?"
"No, but he didn't talk about his work very often and I'll be honest, sometimes when he did, I wouldn't pay much attention if I didn't know what he was talking about."
It made her sad thinking that she'd tuned him out as soon as she heard words like "spectroscopy" and "mineral contracts" and would gladly listen to hours of it with rapt attention if she could just talk to him one last time.
"When did you last speak with him?"
"It was the night the power went out at the embassy complex, but I didn't actually speak with him. He sent me a message that morning that was really weird."
"'Weird' in what way?" he asked.
She didn't answer him immediately as her thoughts cascaded through the logical aspects of what may have happened to her father. She'd spent the last two days so consumed with grief that she hadn't really thought about how strange it all was.
"Well, the message my dad sent was really personal, which was a bit out of character. He made it sound like he knew something was going to happen to him, and he left me information for his private safety deposit box back home."
"Have you checked the contents of this box?"
"No," she admitted, thinking it was probably time that she did. "But there's more. The last time I talked to him was a few days before the conference by audio link. That was when he told me about the helium. But I remember thinking that the name of the place was unusual. I can't remember if he said Zetar or Zekar or Zehar, but I'm certain it was something like that. Anyway, I looked up all possible spellings that I could think of on current Federation star charts and found nothing even close to any of those names."
"You are certain?" he asked.
"Well, obviously not certain because I can't even remember the exact name, but wasn't the Comstock debris found in the Bolian sector? I thought the Bolian sector was charted."
"Drafting star charts is complex and never precise," he tried to explain, though clearly he was also thinking about something else while he spoke. "Distances on star charts appear to be minimal, but they're scaled by factors of ten based on warp travel speeds. The actual distance between different celestial bodies is difficult to adequately comprehend. As scanning technology improves, charts are becoming more accurate but the further out they are from central Federation space, the less reliable the data is."
"So what does that mean? Finding new stars and planets is like searching for a needle in a haystack?"
"Your analogy is crude and imprecise. It suggests you are certain there even is a needle and likely assumes the haystack is of a predictable size. It would be more correct to say that a charted sector of space is like a field of haystacks and based on mathematical probability you are confident of that a minimum number of needles likely exists within them."
"So there could be planets in the Bolian system that we don't even know about?"
"It is almost a mathematical certainty that there are," he confirmed. "This planet that you initially referred to as Zetar, did he say it was a planet?"
"I guess so," she said. "What else would it be?"
"It could be the name of a system, or a moon, planetoid, asteroid, star, nebula, comet, or some other phenomena."
"I'm getting the feeling I'm not providing much help," she said, feeling exasperated and noticing they were fast approaching her apartment. Should she tell him how she felt before it was too late?
"Do you know where they found the debris of the Comstock?" he asked, his voice careful.
"The people from Starfleet that I talked to on Friday said it was 'Ivor' and said it was in the Bolian sector, but I'd never heard of that either," she confessed. "I guess it seems weird that they don't have more records. I thought there were rules about flight plans and logs."
"There are for Starfleet and for private vessels travelling through certain regions of space," he explained. "But no such regulations exist for private vessels in frontier space. The Comstock had very few transmissions before its disappearance, but that is not considered uncommon for a survey ship."
"I don't feel like I'm being very helpful," she said woefully, beginning to feel panic at the thought of saying goodbye to him.
"You have been more helpful than you likely realize," he replied. "Is there nothing else you can recall from your last messages or conversations with him?"
"No, but I also wasn't thinking in terms of him disappearing at the time. If you want, I can show you all of my archived messages from the last few months."
"I do not wish to intrude into your private correspondence."
"It's not really all that private…" Amanda stopped, suddenly recalling the strange glitch with the messages on her PADD from several months ago.
"Miss Grayson?"
They had arrived at the stoop of her split level apartment building and she was about to explain that she had reason to believe someone had been reading her personal messages when she noticed the front door of her apartment was cracked open by about ten centimeters. His eyes travelled along the path of her gaze and he immediately noticed the problem.
"I locked my door before we left, didn't I?" she asked as she felt the blood draining from her face.
"You did."
She started to walk up the stairs but he gave her a halting motion with his hand and walked ahead of her and nudged the door open with his foot. The apartment seemed untouched, but she still felt panic all the same. She started to walk in but he stopped her.
"You should contact the authorities," he said.
While she agreed with him, she explained that would be difficult to do, since she had left her PADD sitting on the kitchen counter and from her vantage point she could see it was no longer there.